Meet the Team

Epione Biopharmaceuticals was founded in 2015 with one goal: to create safe, effective pain treatments that are non-addictive adjuvants to opioid medications. Meet the people behind the innovation.

Management Team

President and CEOMilton Kleinpeter

Mr. Kleinpeter is a Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical, and Telecommunications leader with over 30 years of industry experience with companies such as Hoechst Marion Roussel, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Durata Therapeutics, and Actavis/Allergan. Mr. Kleinpeter has clinical knowledge in oncology, endocrinology, neurology/addiction, pain management, infectious disease, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, urology, and respiratory diseases. He had key leadership positions in a number of product launches including Nexium, Chantix, and Dalvance. Mr. Kleinpeter has held positions in sales, specialty sales, hospital sales, and managed markets as an individual contributor. He has also served in management positions in sales, specialty sales, hospital sales, and in multiple commercialization operations. His breadth of experience has resulted in an extensive professional network that bridges scientific researchers, clinical practitioners, sales, manufacturing, and managed care organizations. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt and received additional training through the Kellogg School of Business Executive Education Program.

A graduate of the Providence School of Nursing (Mobile, AL), Mrs. Feldman has been a patient-focused caregiver, clinician, and medical administrator for over 30 years. Her experience has included surgical and hospital nursing. She has also practiced nursing in clinical and surgery center settings. She brings her medical background plus her experience in clinic management roles for large private practice operations to the Epione team.

Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Vladimir Antikarov

A Fulbright Scholar, Mr. Antikarov has held leadership roles in sophisticated financial transactions, corporate finance, strategy development and enterprise risk management, driving gains in revenue, profitability, and shareholder value. His experience includes work with Fortune 500 companies, as well as international front runners such as AT&T, Merck, Lockheed Martin, Alcatel-Lucent, Thomson Reuters, Philips, OSG, Roche, Valle, Votorantim, Telefonica and Axel Johnson. He is co-author of a best-selling book, Real Options, A Practitioner’s Guide, which is used by MIT, Harvard and The Wharton School and by corporate finance practitioners. Antikarov is cited as a thought partner in McKinsey & Company’s book Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies.

Vice President of Operations
Ms. Sabra Aaron

Ms. Aaron is an experienced operational management professional with over 25 years of experience in consulting and professional services, database design and implementation, IT project management, business continuity planning, and grants development and administration, for academic and for-profit entities including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland College Park, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, the University of Rochester, and Blackbaud.

National Sales Director
Mr. Carl Haynes

As National Sales Director of Epione BioPharmaceuticals, Mr. Haynes is responsible for leading sales execution and marketing delivery. He is a proficient sales leader with 20 years of sales consulting and management experience in the pharmaceutical industry and multiple start-ups in various industries. With successful experience in sales leadership roles, he is proven at building highly effective sales teams and business partnerships.

Human Resources ManagerLeslie Briner

Ms. Briner is an experienced human resources professional with a background in federal and state compliance, and general HR issues. She comes to Epione from ADP where she worked with clients in a variety of market spaces. She is a graduate of the E.J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University.

Scientific Advisors

Steve Gershon, MD
Dr. Steven Gershon is a nationally recognized speaker on Low Back Pain, Musculoskeletal Medicine and Myofascial Pain Syndrome. He has lectured in over 40 States and Canada as well as presented in Great Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. He is an experienced clinical and academic pain specialist. He earned his MD at Downstate Medical Center, and completed residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York University School of Medicine Rusk Institute. Dr. Gershon has practiced pain medicine for more than 25 years, and also serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Eastern Virginia Medical School (Norfolk, VA). He has served as principal investigator or sub-investigator in nearly 20 clinical trials, and has published research in Current Medical Research and Opinion and The Journal of Opioid Management.

Mr. Peter B. HuttFDA Advisor

Peter Barton Hutt is a senior counsel in the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling, specializing in Food and Drug Law. He began his law practice with the firm in 1960 and, except for his four years in the government, has continued at the firm ever since. From 1971 to 1975 he was Chief Counsel for the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Hutt has represented the national trade associations for the food, prescription drug, nonprescription drug, dietary supplement, and cosmetic industries. While at FDA he drafted the legislation that became the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, and beginning in 1962 he has participated in the drafting of most of the major legislation amending the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. He has testified before the House and Senate more than 100 times either as a witness or as counsel accompanying a witness.

Michael Manning, PhD
Michael R. Manning is a biochemist who has had an important role in the development of medical technology over the past fifty years. In the 1960’s, while working as a chemical engineer for battery manufacturer Exide, Mr. Manning began working on a project with Robert Becker, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Syracuse Veteran’s Administration. Dr. Becker was a pioneer whose work on regenerative medicine was told in his New York Times bestselling biography, The Body Electric. Mr. Manning designed and built Dr. Becker’s test coils for pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF), and it was this technology that led to the wound healing technology in use around the world for speeding recovery of large wounds that otherwise would not heal. Mr. Manning received a pioneering patent 3,893,462. It taught the methods used today, around the world, for wound healing and other capabilities.

Mr. Manning went on to work with industry leaders Arthur Pilla, MD and Andrew Basset, MD, at Columbia University, and then worked with Martin Blank, Ph.D. and Reba Goodman, Ph.D. In 1992 Mr. Manning was recruited by Temple University Trustee Richard Fox, a wealthy realtor, who provided private funding to study millimeter-wave technology.

Since then, Mr. Manning has pursued a breakthrough in cancer immune stimulation therapy, stem cell stimulation as originally discovered with Dr. Becker in the 1970’s, with an updated method of dedifferentiating stem cells, and pioneering patents for treatments and devices that are being used to improve cognition and stabilize degeneration in human studies on Alzheimer’s.

Mr. Manning contributed his knowledge and new innovations to the Epione patent portfolio. He incorporated many of the innovations he and Mr. Weiner have found in the laboratories and cited in literature for improving human health with directed energy that can improve the treatment of pain without the plague of addiction.

Michael Weiner
Mr. Weiner is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and CEO of Technology Innovations, a company he cofounded in 1999 which has created multiple spin-off ventures. He holds over 30 issued patents, and has brought innovations to several industries including computer science, medicine, and biomedical engineering. He believes that society can benefit by improving the methods by which innovation moves from idea to application and commercialization, and that the planet can be sustained by encouraging knowledge, innovation, and the mechanics of enterprise.

Board of Directors

Alex RuckdaeschelMr. Ruckdaeschel joined the board of directors of Epione in November 2016. Since March 2001, Mr. Ruckdaeschel has worked in the financial industry in the United States and Europe and as a co-founder, partner and or in senior management. Mr. Ruckdaeschel is a board member of a number of publicly listed and privately held companies Mr. Ruckdaeschel cofounded Herakles Capital Management and AMK Capital Advisors. Mr. Ruckdaeschel has also been a partner with Alpha Plus Advisors, from 2006 to 2010, and Nanostart AG the leading Private equity group in Nanotechnology, from 2002 to 2006, where he was the head of their U.S. group. Mr. Ruckdaeschel has significant experience in startup operations as the manager of DAC Nanotech-Fund and Biotech-Fund from 2002 to 2006. Mr. Ruckdaeschel was a research assistant at Dunmore Management in New York focusing on intrinsic value identifying firms that were undervalued and had global scale potential. From October 1992 to October 2000 Mr. Ruckdaeschel was in the German military and supported active international United Nations operations throughout the world.

Safe, non-addictive pain relief

Safe Harbor Statement

Our information may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this information. Please bear in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.